Saturday, April 25

Death toll from Nepal quake now at 1,130 and climbing UPDATED 6X

Time difference: Kathmandu, Nepal is 9 hours and 45 minutes ahead of New York, NY, which is on Eastern Daylight time.
So it's light again there now, although whether the international airport is open again is iffy. It's been shut since the quake. Aftershocks in the region still going on.
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Just to review: quake and aftershocks in addition to Nepal: parts of Tibet, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India -- India as far south as Delhi. Wikipedia is also on the case now:"The 2015 Nepal earthquake was a magnitude 7.8 or 8.1 (Mw) earthquake that occurred at 11:57 NST (6:12:26 UTC) on Saturday 25 April 2015, with the epicenter approximately 29 km (18 mi) east-southeast of Lamjung, Nepal [about 50 mi from capital of Kathmandu], and the hypocenter at a depth of approximately 15 km (9.3 mi).[1][2] It is the most powerful earthquake to have hit Nepal since the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake. At least 1,505 people are known to have been killed as a result of the earthquake."

An earlier AP report put the depth at 7 mi. but 7 or 9, that's shallow. so very violent shaking, like 7.0 quake that struck near Haiti capital Port au Prince in 2010
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Aw, for Pete's sake; the international airport was shut down. Just learned this from AP report updated 5 minutes ago. I can see why it was shut but yes, as AP noted, that would tend to hamper international relief efforts. The AP report has background on the country and the quake, which is 7.8 although the Guardian has it at 7.9. The Guardian as I noted in my first entry, is doing live updates.

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"A Nepali police spokesman said the latest figure includes at least 634 in the Kathmandu Valley and at least 300 more in the capital."

The Guardian is doing live updates of the worst earthquake to hit Nepal in more than 80 years.

From 2 Guardian updates 3 hrs ago:

"Around 300,000 foreign tourists were estimated to be in Nepal for the spring trekking and climbing season. Officials have been overwhelmed by calls from concerned friends and relatives."

"Relief efforts in Nepal have been hampered because of a collapse in communication. Many of the reported deaths have been in the more populous areas, but there have also been reports of devastation in outlying, isolated mountainous areas."

Saturday's catastrophic earthquake in Nepal occurred because of two converging tectonic plates: the India plate and the overriding Eurasia plate to the north, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Tectonic plates are the large, thin, relatively rigid plates that move relative to one another on the outer surface of the Earth.

Plates are always slowly moving, but they get stuck at their edges due to friction. When the stress on the edge overcomes the friction, there is an earthquake that releases energy in waves that travel through the earth's crust and cause the shaking that we feel.

The quake had a depth of only seven miles, which is considered shallow in geological terms, the Associated Press reported. The shallower the quake, the more destructive power it carries.

The earthquake was felt as far away as Lahore in Pakistan, which is more than 700 miles away. It was also felt 380 miles away in Lhasa in Tibet, and 400 miles away in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Although a major plate boundary with a history of large-to-great sized earthquakes, large quakes in this area are rare in the documented historical era, the U.S. Geological Survey reports. Over the past century, just four events of magnitude 6.0 or larger have occurred within about 150 miles of Saturday's earthquake.

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